IN PRAISE OF IMAGINATION
A woman in this country had in her possession – acquired when or where I do not know, though lawfully – a preserved human head. It was the tattooed head of a Maori warrior, and experts assigned it to the early 19th century. Anyway, the woman in our story apparently saw no difference between a human head and an inlaid escritoire, and sent the object to Bonham’s, the auctioneers, to sell for her. Bonham’s, for their part, made no demur, and prepared to offer one human head, in good condition, with tattoo, to the highest bidder at a forthcoming sale. Now read on.
Many a ritual once thought perfectly normal has come to seem abhorrent, from cannibalism to burning witches. And yet there is in England a woman and a firm of auctioneers who between them are unable to see that they might be doing anything odd by trading in human heads. Maori leaders have called the impeding sale ‘a degrading and deeply offensive desecration’, and that strikes me as scoring very high marks for both succinctness and accuracy.
Let us examine the nature of this more closely. If a human head is to you a toy, an ornament, or another acquisition for your cabinet de voyeur, it does not mean that you are wicked, but it does mean that there is something missing in your make-up. Imagination is the missing ingredient. That Maori head once spoke; in a strange tongue, no doubt, but spoke. It kissed its wife; it got wet in the rain; it died and was severed from its shoulders. The body below the head was just as real; take its hand and feel the warmth of a living being. Imagination stirs, does it not?
You think these questions are pointless and childish? Then you are probably an auctioneer at Bonham’s or the owner of the controversial lot.
It is imagination that is dying out in the world. If imagination dies, it will make the world a desert. For imagination informs every culture; it is the blood of art, the marl of maturity, the guide-dog of ethics, the cornerstone of religions.
From Now Read On by Bernard Levin, in Michael Duckworth and Kathy Gude. Proficiency Masterclass. Student’s Book. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, p. 72.
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